Mum’s the word!

Certain things seem obvious until you stop and think about them.

Take confidentiality. It seems obvious that a good Christian friend is someone you can speak to in confidence. So that what you say stays ‘just between the two of us’. That’s someone you can trust – who doesn’t gossip and never discloses what’s been spoken in private.

It’s obvious: confidentiality is a good thing. Or is it?

What about things that shouldn’t be kept secret. An abuser tells their victim: ‘this will be our little secret; just between the two of us.’ That’s not a confidence to keep. Not then, and not when it is disclosed either.

Dilemmas

What about the dilemma professionals face? We want our medics and lawyers to be both completely honest and to maintain absolute confidentiality. But that’s really hard. Keeping something confidential will sometimes mean pretending you don’t know something when you really do. Which is not entirely honest!

And confidentiality is context specific. Suppose my daughter tells me she has got engaged. That’s sensitive information – I know I’m not supposed to post it on Facebook! But even though I have no explicit permission, I am supposed to tell my wife! In this context, it’s not passing information on that will get me into trouble, but failing to do so!

It’s complicated. Secrets generally are. The Bible says that one day we will know fully, even as we are fully known (1 Corinthians 13.12) and it will be paradise. We long for an end to secrets; for the day when we can be ourselves – fully revealed and yet still fully loved.

Good secrets

Yet, that day is not yet. In the meantime, God seems to approve of a little secrecy. We are to pray in secret, give in secret, fast in secret. Our giving is to be so hidden that even our left hand isn’t to know what our right is doing (Matthew 6.1-18). In the Garden, the Fall meant an awareness of nakedness and a desire to hide. God didn’t rebuke Adam and Eve for putting on coverings; he didn’t insist they return to nakedness. He improved their covering – replacing fig leaves with animal skins. We live in a state of tension: between a future age where all will be revealed (Matthew 10.26) and a present age where, because of sin, some secrecy is needed.

In church, the medical model of confidentiality doesn’t seem to fit. Church is family and body. Bodies need the accurate flow of information among its parts– without it we suffer a stroke or paralysis. Families aspire to being more than a collection of private individuals. They want shared knowledge, shared history and shared understanding. It’s how they cultivate a sense of belonging. That must nudge us toward openness in church. We should want communities where people share their lives, and their secrets.

But we have to be wise. Even in families, information isn’t shared universally. Parents will keep one child’s information secret from the others. The way parents talk to each other will be different to the way they talk to their children.

It will help us if we see that there is a shared confidentiality in church. Staff teams and elders and other groupings in church probably do need to cultivate the habit of speaking freely together, but more circum-spectly with others. Indeed, a leadership that can’t speak openly (and privately) with one another has lost the ability to lead.

Confidentiality is tricky. We have work to do if our churches are to become places where people feel safe, not because everything is kept secret but because wise love drives every word that we say.

More about Biblical Counselling UK is available at www.biblicalcounselling.org.uk or you can contact them at info@biblicalcounselling.org.uk or c/o Christ Church, Christchurch Street, Cambridge CB1 1HT.